Turkish style green beans

There is a category of dishes called "Zeytinyağlılar" in Turkish cuisine. The name roughly translates to "those (cooked) with olive oil". Mostly they are vegetable dishes and are served cold. Not only are they very tasty and healthy, they are also relatively easy to prepare.

So here is a very easy recipe for Zeytinyağlı Fasulye, i.e. green beans with olive oil.

Green beans with olive oil, Turkish style
-one 16oz pack of whole or cut frozen green beans (not French cut)
-one medium size white onion
-one 12oz can of chopped or diced tomatoes
-three to eight tablespoons of olive oil

Chop the onion. Put all ingredients in a large pot and stir to mix evenly. Add water until ingredients are barely covered. Add 1-2 teaspoons of salt. Put on high heat until boiling starts, then set heat to medium. Cook until beans are soft.

You can eat this dish warm, but it's traditionally eaten cold. So the next day you just take it out of the fridge and serve. Bon apetite!

Roasted pepper salad

I discovered roasted red peppers when I came to the US. I think the first time I had them, they were part of a roast beef sandwich. After that, I bought many jars of roasted peppers to make sandwiches. Thank god, I've left the jar days behind. Roasting peppers at home is easy and the results are superior to any store-bought product.

The easiest way to roast peppers at home is to use the broiler in your oven. Turn it on, and get to preparing the peppers while it's warming up. Red and yellow peppers work best for roasting. You want to cut out the stem and wash away all seeds. Then cut the peppers into flat pieces. Place them skin side up on a sheet of aluminum foil on a cookie sheet. Put the cookie sheet on the highest level in your oven. Because the peppers are so close to the broiler, you'll need to keep an eye on them and turn them every few minutes. When the skin is coming off and the peppers are nice and soft, it's time to take them out. Let them cool for a bit and then remove the skins. Voi-la, you have roasted peppers (and a wonderful smelling kitchen!)

You can put your roasted peppers to use as garnish in a sandwich or a green salad. Or, you can make a salad where roasted peppers play the lead role. Here's the recipe I learned from my friend recently:

Roasted pepper salad

1 roasted red pepper
1 roasted yellow pepper
1 ripe tomato
1/4 cup feta cheese
1 tbsp olive oil

Cut your roasted peppers into small pieces (1/8th to 1/4th of an inch on each side) and chop the tomato. Put everything in a salad bowl and add a table spoon of olive oil. Crumble the feta over the salad and mix everything up. The salad tastes great like this, but if you want the flavors to blend a little, you can make it ahead of time and keep it in the fridge for an hour. Also, if you chop everything small and really crumble the feta, you can use this salad in place of salsa for a tasty bruschetta.

Spaghetti sauce

Back when I first moved off campus in college, a box of pasta and a jar of spaghetti sauce made a nice dinner. But after a while I found the supermarket-bought sauce extremely boring and completely tasteless. Because of this, I didn't eat spaghetti with tomato sauce for years afterwards. Everything changed one day last year when I was dining at my uncle's place. The tomato sauce was great. It actually had taste! I couldn't believe it. I asked my uncle about it and found out that it was homemade, and that the recipe was pretty simple. So simple in fact, that anyone who has an extra ten minutes should never eat supermarket-bought sauce ever again.

So, as a public service, I'm going to share basics of this tomato sauce recipe with you. If you go to your local farmers' market in the summer (and you really should), that is the place to get your tomatoes. If it's not the season, canned chopped tomatoes will also work. The other ingredients are olive oil, onions, garlic and of course salt. I can't give you exact amounts because I don't know them myself. You want one to two tablespoons of olive oil for every two cups of chopped tomatoes. About half a small white onion and one or two cloves or garlic, both chopped, should be enough. Tomatoes and oil are the main ingredients, with the onion and garlic just adding a little complexity. Add all ingredients to a (preferably non-stick) pot and start cooking. While it's cooking, add some salt. With the salt, you need to add some and taste it until you get it right. When the sauce is significantly reduced, take it off the fire and put it through a blender or food processor to get it smooth. Voi-la!

Given the non-exact nature of this recipe, you will probably end up with better homemade tomato sauce after you get some practice. But once you have your version of the recipe down, you can cook up a large batch and freeze it in small containers, and have great tomato sauce all the time.

Martinis and other cocktails

I was listening to a bartending related podcast a little while ago and it reminded me of one of my pet peeves: the issue with martinis.

I'm not sure about the exact time, but it seems that about 5-8 years ago many bars discovered that they could boost sales by giving their cocktails names with the word "martini" in them. This tactic has a few things going for it, first and foremost being that most bar-going people have heard of martinis, even if they don't exactly know what they are. Then there is the cool factor of martinis, which are, in many people's minds, associated with James Bond. Last, there is the non-PC girly drink issue: it's easier for the average man to order a pineapple martini than a Bahama Mama, even if they are one and the same.

While this naming-everything-martini thing works out great for bars, it hurts cocktail culture because it essentially mis-educates people. So, to help in the fight against the everything-is-a-martini crowd, let's define the martini.

A martini is a cocktail made with gin and vermouth. Historically dry and/or sweet vermouth were used. Today, most usually a martini will contain dry vermouth, making it a dry martini. The ratio of gin to vermouth can be anywhere from 2:1 to 10:1. If you use less vermouth, you are more or less drinking cold gin, which is ok if that's what you like, but you wouldn't call it a martini. Another variation on the martini that unjustly stretches the definition of the word is one made with vodka instead of gin. Once again, this is a matter of taste so we won't pass judgement on it, as long as it's ordered as a "vodka martini".

Next time you go to a fancy bar, remember that a martini is a classic cocktail made with gin and vermouth. It tastes great, if you ask me. And while there are many other great tasting cocktails out there, they need to get their own names, and not use the word martini.

Born in the USA

Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" came up today while I was shuffling songs on my PC. I looked up the lyrics to read along as I listened. Understandably I was shocked to find the lyrics to be critical of the US.

Jon Stewart

I've been spending a lot of time lying in bed since I broke my ankle. With a laptop and an internet connection, it's not too hard to keep yourself occuppied. Today I went over to YouTube and searched for Jon Stewart. Mainly I wanted to find his monologue at the Academy Awards presentation, but of course I got many results from the Daily Show. Since I hadn't seen the show in a while, I decided to watch some of them. It was really good stuff. It's hard to the Daily Show to be great every day but I think over time it produces many good segments. However, one of the most interesting videos I watched was a part of Jon Stewart's appearance on Larry King Live on CNN.

Before I'd ever watched Larry King Live, I had an image of Larry as a good interviewer with a long, respected career. After seeing him with Jon Stewart today, I lost some respect for him. Maybe my image of him was undeserved, or maybe it's wrong for me to judge him on a couple minutes of just one show. It's just that the questions he asked were so ridiculous, and Jon Stewart seemed so rational, level headed and smart that in contrast, Larry looked stupid.

Oh well, I don't know who cares about Larry King anymore. But if you're not very familiar with Jon Stewart, and you have some time, go over to YouTube and search for his Daily Show stuff. Now that he's come to the attention of the general public, from being known among Comedy Central viewers, he's bound to be talked about more (although I've probably missed the boat on talking about this issue, since there was so much press about his Oscar hosting already).

Update

I'll be posting a little less frequently because I broke a bone in my ankle.

Cell phone companies think you're stupid

No really, they do. I called up my cell phone service provider yesterday. I had seen an ad they had that gave an expensive phone to new customers for free. The only requirement was to sign a one-year contract. I've been with this same company for four years. I asked them about the deal and they said it was only available for new customers. But, they told me, they really appreciated my loyalty and therefore would give me any phone I wanted at a discount. So I asked about the phone in the ad. I could have it for only $99. Wow, what a deal! Pay $99 for something that's $0 for everyone else. When I told them that it wasn't much of a deal compared to the one I saw in the ad, they dropped it to $70. So this is what they think of loyal customers. We have to pay for everything, but new customers get everything for free. That seems to be the exact opposite of appreciating loyalty.

"What to do?" you ask? I'll tell you. Switch cell phone providers every twelve months or so. Never sign a contract longer than a year and as soon as that expires, start looking for deals at competitors. When they're giving an expensive phone away for free, switch. And remember, you can take your phone number with you. If you catch a good deal through Amazon like one of my friends did, you can end up getting paid money on top of a free phone. Maybe they'll catch on at some point, and start treating loyal customers well.

Confessions

I know, from the way it started, this blog gave the impression of being a food blog. It's not. While I will talk about food and drink often, I won't restrict myself to those subjects.

I need to post the second part of the banana series but I'm waiting for an oppportunity to cook for some people. While I have made several variations on the dish I want to post about, they've always been improvised so I don't have a solid recipe. As soon as I try a few things out and make sure I've got something worth posting, it'll be up here.

So, onto today's subject. If you're not a Turkish speaker, you probably haven't heard of the very popular website itiraf.com. The name of the site means "confession". I guess initially the idea was that people would post anonymously about things they've done that they're ashamed to talk about with most people, but still want to get off their chests. Well, the scope has widened considerably, to the point where there are posts about cute things little kids do or impressions of foreign locations visited. With this widening came a small loss of popularity, but you can still find some posts that are genuine confessions, that, I don't know, I guess warm you up inside. Posts that actually seem worth putting on paper.

I saw one such post today. Since it's in Turkish, you will have to make do with my translation of it. There's a big difference between being bilingual and being able to translate well, so please excuse the poor job I did. I think you will get the gist of the post though.

"Over the weekend, my nine year-old dog and I went to the forest. We sang, we howled, we cooked meat over an open fire and drank wine. We played games, but he got tired very fast. In the evening, we came home. I took him in my lap and helped him get off the car. He moved forward using his front legs because the other two don't work. Happy and in pain we entered the house. I put my shovel and my gun down. I couldn't do it to my friend."

Bananas for dessert: fruit in disguise, part 1

(alternate women's magazine title: Guilt-free desserts!)

Bananas are a little different than your run-of-the-mill fruits. Take apples for example: sure they taste good, but you look at one and it screams "health!" at you. You know, "an apple a day keeps health insurance companies in business"... Well, sometimes I want something that will taste great as a dessert but not remind me that I'm trying to eat healthy. Bananas, although quite good for you, don't have that image problem apples have. So, eat one as a snack. Or if you want something just a little richer and fancier, try the following recipe:

Sultan's snack
Cut a medium sized, ripe banana into thin, diagonal slices. Drizzle with honey and sprinkle with chopped walnuts.

It tastes great, but it doesn't contain any simple, processed sugars. It's relatively low in calories and you can control the fat content by how much walnut you use. The fat you get from the walnuts is the good kind, the kind that helps you increase your good cholestrol.

Of course, for people who think of dessert as warm fudge brownies toppped with ice cream, this may still look a little too heatlh-foody. No worries, we'll take care of you people in part two.